Les Disques 71 will publish early 2009 a tribute to Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville, entitled Phonautographe(s). Noise contributions can be submitted until December 31st, 2008.

Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville recorded someone singing an excerpt from the French folksong "Au Clair de la Lune" on April 9, 1860, and deposited the results with the Academie des Sciences in Paris in 1861 (16 years before Thomas Edison invention of the phonograph). Four years earlier, in 1857, he deposited with the Institut National de la Propriete Industrielle as documenting "Phonautographie de la voix humaine a distance (the human voice at a distance)", the first sound ever recorded. Two brief excerpts from two different records on this sheet are the earliest traces of his work played back to date, but his recording methods were not yet sophisticated enough at this time to yield audibly recognizable results. The phonautrograph machine was able to record sound but not to play recorded sounds. It tooks more than 150 years to hear for the first time those recordings, thanks to researchers of First Sounds http://www.firstsounds.org/ collective. When listening to those excerpts, it appears clearly that noise is a seminal component of the history of record industry.

Contributions can be submitted until December 31st, 2008. Contributors will have to send us two files using some of the three recordings available here http://www.firstsounds.org/sounds/index.php. One file will be published on a cdr (limited edition of 30, as usual), the other will be downloadable on Les Disques 71 website. Each file should not exceed 185.7 seconds. All material will be licensed under Creative Commons Attribution license. Contributors will receive one out-of-market copy of the cdr.http://www.seteun.net/records